26/23
In times of war, a poor woodcutter and his wife live in a large forest. One day, the woman finds and rescues a little girl, which brings an irrevocable change to the lives of the couple and those whose paths the girl will cross. This is Michel Hazanavicius’ first animated film… This is the best 2024 release I’ve seen this year so far and we’re in mid-December 2024. It tells a story that happens in Poland during World War II, almost like a folk tale. Most of the plot takes place in a forest, so typical of the aforementioned folk tales, in which a couple of woodcutter’s adopt a Jewish girl who has been thrown off a deportation train that was passing through their forest. Her father abandoned her to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I won’t go into further plot details so you can see them for yourself, I just want to add that the film will come to a deeply philosophical conclusion. On the technical side, everything is done perfectly as well. The film’s visuals are excellently done. The drawing style is perfect, neither too detailed nor too rough, and mostly depicts low-lit scenes with dominant shades of grey, thus underlining the horrors of war and mass extermination most infamous in the history of mankind. And then the soundtrack, which is sublime: The musical score, the sound effects, the narration and the voice acting (I saw the original French version), all totally appropriate to present this gem of a film. In conclusion it is one of the best films dealing with the subject of racism and particularly the Shoah, for its artistic procedure and the story it wants to tell. tel.